A Tin Anniversary For The Iraq War

I wish I had something useful to say. In the absence of one, I encourage you to read John B. Judis who, unlike myself, was wise enough to see the criminal folly of the Iraq War beforehand and not only after the fact.

What’s striking about the piece, though, is the disconnect between where he begins and where he ends.

He begins:

In the six months before the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the six weeks after the invasion (culminating in George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech), I often compared my situation in Washington to that of Jeannette Rankin, the Montana congresswoman and pacifist who voted against entry into both World War I and II. Not that I would have voted against declaring war in 1941; the comparison was to her isolation, not with her isolationism.

There were, of course, people who opposed invading Iraq—Illinois State Senator Barack Obama among them—but within political Washington, it was difficult to find like-minded foes.

But it turns out not to be the case that there were no dissenters – in fact, dissent was rampant. It just wasn’t heard:

I found fellow dissenters to the war in two curious places: the CIA and the military intelligentsia. That fall, I got an invitation to participate in a seminar at the Central Intelligence Agency on what the world would be like in fifteen or twenty years. I went out of curiosity—I don’t like this kind of speculation—but as it turned out, much of the discussion was about the pending invasion of Iraq. Except for me and the chairman, who was a thinktank person, the participants were professors of international relations. And almost all of them were opposed to invading Iraq. . . .

I had a similar experience when I talked to Jon Sumida, a historian at the University of Maryland, who specializes in naval history and frequently lectures at the military’s colleges. Sumida told me that most of the military people he talked to—and he had wide contacts—were opposed to an invasion. I confirmed what Sumida told me a year or so later when I was invited to give a talk on the Iraq war at a conference on U.S. foreign policy at Maryland. A professor from the Naval War College was to comment on my presentation. I feared a stinging rebuttal to my argument that the United States had erred in invading Iraq, but to my astonishment, the professor rebuked me for not being tough enough on the Bush administration. . . .

The people who had the most familiarity with the Middle East and with the perils of war were dead set against the invasion. That includes not only the CIA analysts and the military professors, but also the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which rejected the administration’s claims that Iraq was about to acquire nuclear weapons.

And yet he concludes:

My own experience after Powell’s speech [of wavering in his opposition to the war] bears out the tremendous power that an administration, bent on deception, can have over public opinion, especially when it comes to foreign policy. And when the dissenters in the CIA, military, and State Department are silenced, the public—not to mention, journalists—has little recourse in deciding whether to support what the administration wants to do. Those months before the Iraq war testify to the importance of letting the public have full access to information before making decisions about war and peace. And that lesson should be heeded before we rush into still another war in the Middle East.

But the dissenters weren’t “silenced” so much as ignored – and not only by the Administration. They were ignored when they testified before Congress. They were ignored by the press. They were ignored by ordinary people – like myself – in personal conversation. I remember vividly having an argument with an intelligent, non-ideological friend who opposed the war simply because he saw that the case for it was absurdly threadbare. When I couldn’t actually refute his arguments, I changed them in my own mind to easier-to-defeat straw men, the better to preserve my already-settled opinion. Yes, we were deceived about any number of matters – but we, official Washingtonians and ignorant college students, wanted to be deceived. Because we wanted to go to war.

I remember ten years ago, watching video of the first missile attacks on Iraq on the televisions over our trading floor. A friend and colleague from Brussels was visiting the office that day, and he observed the traders whooping and cheering each explosion. And his face turned gray, as he muttered something about the “Nazi mentality” on display, and I remember taking silent offense at his outrageous comparison. But nobody on that trading floor was thinking of the nobility of our cause in Iraq. They were just glad to see us taking it to the bad guys, and hard. That, most fundamentally, is why we went to war – and WMD, democracy promotion, access to oil, all the various articulated justifications were so much back-filling to an already decided course of action.

The lesson of Iraq isn’t that the public should have “full access to information” before making decisions about war and peace. The public had access to dissenting opinion and information, if it wanted to hear, as did the press that could have broadcast such views more widely, just as today the press and public have plenty of access to dissenting views on the seriousness of the Iranian nuclear program and the likely costs and consequences of military action. Access to information isn’t enough – you have to want to hear it.

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38 Responses to A Tin Anniversary For The Iraq War

I will always remember folks two cubicles away from me, gathered around a computer monitor showing a strafing run… all chuckling. Pow! Wham! Zowie! Got those bad guys [or rather the grainy image of a vehicle in the dark]!

For being upset by that mentality (in addition to being skeptical about the casus belli), I and so many others were called all manner of things. I suffered from “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” I was a wuss. I didn’t love my country. I liked Saddam Hussein, and was complicit in his every misdeed.

There’s a reason why the BS about a connection between Al Quaeda and Hussein was so damned potent: people wanted revenge for 9/11, and Afghanistan wasn’t satisfying enough. And no matter how many times it was pointed out that there was no connection and that such a connection was pretty illogical, too many people just didn’t care. It was time to kick ass. Well, not really. For the vast majority, it was time to watch others kick ass and chuckle.

I’m still angry about it. Especially when I see the usual suspects agitating for another idiotic war.

War promotion is simple. It comes down to being able to effectively de-humanize the proposed enemy. Once that is accomplished, the flimsiest case can be made to kill them. As well, the depictions of war as a gigantic video game rather than the up close look at the blood and guts on the ground make it even easier. War is at times necessary. Iraq was not one of those times.

What I finding very concerning is everybody is calling Iraq 2 “A Loss”? Why is that? The goals were remove Saddam, stop any WMD programs (OK non-existence), and set up democrasy. On that note, it was a victory although it feels like an incredibily empty victory and one that was not worth fighting for. If we call it a loss than we focus on the war tactics not starting the war itself. (I am not about to call Afghanistan a victory.)

Thinking about the Iraq war that way makes feel me like the empty victory of the lost generation of British and French after WW1. (OK I exaggerating that point.)

The last lines of Judgment at Nuremberg are the best ever for those, like me, who initially supported the war. By Abu Ghraib, I was apologising to all my friends:

Ernst Janning: Judge Haywood… the reason I asked you to come: Those people, those millions of people… I never knew it would come to that. You *must* believe it, *You must* believe it!
Judge Dan Haywood: Herr Janning, it “came to that” the *first time* you sentenced a man to death you *knew* to be innocent.

I was adamantly opposed to the US invasion of Iraq. It seemed a number of Americans I talked to bought the phoney argument that “it was better to fight them over there [Iraq], than here [US].” Specious argument, but held tenaciously.

The promoters of the illegal and idiotic US invasion of Iraq knew they could dupe the American public into believing Iraq posed a “threat”, and that they would not be held accountable for their monstrous actions.

It was a loss due to not only the monetary costs versus a more than questionable outcome, but also the thousands of lives torn apart for what? What exactly was achieved? Removing Saddam himself would have been just as easy with one well placed bullet. I have no question in regards to the strength of our military, and indeed, it did what we asked it to do. The problem is what we asked it to do was never well defined and changed all of the time, and the base premise, if there ever really was one, was incorrect to begin with.

When I think back to my opposition to the war, I remember that my principle argument was that containment and no fly zones were working fine, and (mostly conservative) hawks telling me that those were too expensive(!) and that the war would end things cheaply.

“The people who had the most familiarity with the Middle East and with the perils of war were dead set against the invasion. That includes not only the CIA analysts…”

Not all CIA analysts were against the invasion of Iraq. Michael Morell is currently the Deputy CIA Director and was a high-ranking CIA analyst at the time of the invasion. He has said that there was more evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq than there was of Osama Bin Laden hiding at the compound in Abbotabad.

Noah Millman’s Belgian friend should look at his own country’s history before making comparisons between people simply reacting to what was on T.V. and the Nazis. The Belgians perpetrated a horrendous genocide in what used to be the Belgian Congo and what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Yes “whooping and cheering each explosion” is a little immature and even barbaric, but that’s a natural result of our modern culture of infotainment. This same culture of infotainment has also partly led to all of the mass shootings that we experience today.

icarusr: No matter what you think of the Iraq War, don’t ever compare the war to the war crimes of the Nazis. And Abu Ghraib had nothing to do with the larger war effort. The abuses at Abu Ghraib were perpetrated by a few bad apples, which exist in every war.

That, most fundamentally, is why we went to war – and WMD, democracy promotion, access to oil, all the various articulated justifications were so much back-filling to an already decided course of action.

In 2002, Chalabi joined the annual summer retreat of the American Enterprise Institute near Vail, Colorado. He and Cheney spent long hours together, contemplating the possibilities of a Western-oriented Iraq: an additional source of oil, an alternative to US dependency on an unstable-looking Saudi Arabia.”

Wesley –

It is true that U.S. soldiers do not seem to have been involved in torture as a matter of policy but the U.S. military did outsource it to some of their Iraqi colleagues.

Yes, Americans are easily led into war by those who desire it. Most possess an adolescent understanding of foreign relations seeing it as part of some bogus morality play of “good vs. evil” and/or an extension of their personal relationships dividing countries up between those who “like us” and those who don’t”.

The neo-Wilsonian/neo-Conservative foreign policy consensus plays the American people like a fine violin.

The warmongers know once a war starts whether it was a good idea or not or had any connection to actual, vital, national interest is even less relevant to any discussion.

Wesley,

Judis wrote: “The people who had the most familiarity with the Middle East and with the perils of war [emphasis mine] were dead set against the invasion. That includes not only the CIA analysts and the military professors, but also the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which rejected the administration’s claims that Iraq was about to acquire nuclear weapons.”

“In 1999, Shulsky, along with his fellow Chicago alumnus and Strauss prot�g� Gary Schmitt, founder of the “Project for the New American Century” (PNAC), wrote an essay entitled, “Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence,” which attacked American intelligence-community icon Sherman Kent for failing to understand that all intelligence work ultimately comes down to deception and counterdeception. For Shulsky (as expressed in his article), the goal of intelligence is to serve the needs of policymakers in making possible the attainment of policy goals. Intelligence, he wrote, “was the art of deception.”

No, the lesson of Iraq is that war is hell, and that unleashing hell is not just another policy option. If we haven’t learned that lesson, we haven’t really learned anything.

That is a brilliant summation of my feelings on the war as well. I was too young to remember the deliberations beforehand (I was only 12), but looking back on the carnage it seems so horrifying. I do think you are right that the stated justifications were just dodges for the ultimate desire to go to war in the Middle East, and that, due to strained relations between Iraq and the US during the 90’s (remember when Clinton bombed Iraq, Operation Desert Fox I think it was called, and of course Desert Storm), Iraq was the default target.

That being said, Europe had two world wars to teach them that lesson, yet Britain was a very willing participant in Iraq and France has Mali to deal with. You cannot expect restraint to outstrip puffery in all cases, I suppose.

“They were ignored by ordinary people – like myself – in personal conversation. I remember vividly having an argument with an intelligent, non-ideological friend who opposed the war simply because he saw that the case for it was absurdly threadbare. When I couldn’t actually refute his arguments, I changed them in my own mind to easier-to-defeat straw men, the better to preserve my already-settled opinion. ”

This is the first mea culpa I’ve seen that shows any self-awareness at all. Every other instance of the genre that I’ve run across from a war enthusiast has been an exercise in special pleading.

The war changed how I view this society, and Americans. I live in the Beltway. During the run-up to the stupid thing, I remember getting tuned out every time I brought the subject up — usually after the latest Bush Big Lie du jour had collapsed. So it’s hilarious listening to chickenhawks and “patriots” spout off about their devotion to “democracy” in Iraq, when **here** the most elementary kind of civic engagement, talking about an idiotic war, is — uncool, negative, a real drag. All the talk about how Americans “love” “freedom” and the Constitution and all the rest of it is just empty verbiage. Most Americans don’t give a damn about any of that.

I just wanted to say on a technical sidenote that I’m continuing to have problems finding and navigating among your blogposts. Something seems to have gone subtly wrong with the site over the last week. I used Chrome as my browser, in case that matters.

I knew there was no WMD in Iraq, and I’m just a civilian, without access to the intel available to a president.

But then I actually talked to Iraqis who’d been involved in Iraq’s WMD program before the Persian Gulf War, which along with the subsequent embargo, pretty much destroyed the WMD program (along with a half-million starving Iraqis).

Sglover, Did the United States invade Iraq to create “living space” for its people as Hitler did in Poland? Also, it is “profoundly dishonest” and actually reprehensible to associate the crimes of a few bad apples with everybody else fighting in a war. It’s not just the Iraq War. A couple of years ago, an American soldier in Afghanistan shot and killed 16 Afghan civilians. This crime is so horrific that the military prosecutors working on the case have considered asking for the death penalty for the shooter. All of the rest of the American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan can’t be associated with this despicable murderer any more than can all of the rest of the American soldiers who fought in Iraq can be associated with those soldiers guilty of abuses at Abu Ghraib.

It was the dynamics of group psychology. There was acost to saying or even thinking that attacking Iraq was a bad idea.

There was the huge, spectacular shock of 9/11. This forced people into black and white patriotism. The instinct is to come together into a group. Groups tend to take absolutist positions. Groups tend to rally behind leadership. This was not a time to question “America.” To question the wisdom of attacking Iraq required in some sense stepping outside the group. That is why you hear about all these intelligence and military professionals questioning the invasion IN PRIVATE. Very few questioned it in public, because of the group pressure.

Even though the case for invading Iraq was ridiculous on its face: becasue of 9/11, we were attacking a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Which even Bush admitted, which is why we got this other rational: WMD, magically infecting the middle east with democracy (via an extra national military regime change).

Judis wrote “I found fellow dissenters to the war in two curious places: the CIA and the military intelligentsia.”

It’s not “curious”, it’s their job. CIA and the military “intelligentsia” know propaganda for what it is and must have clear, fact-based understanding to survive. They tend to know what the hell they’re talking about.

Bush neither lied nor deceived nor need feel guilty about anything nor is he rationalizing. His reasons are the same now as they were then. It’s astounding how many lead heads on this site refuse to remember what he said at the time—I will not trust Saddam Hussein—preferring truly zany inventiveness as to why we invaded Iraq to the prosaic truth. Yet some people, a lot of them apparently, simply cannot rest easy in their minds without sucking on their own saintliness.

So what was it concerning which that Bush did not trust Saddam? Why pretend that you know nothing of:

(a) Saddam having had WMDs, (b) Saddam having demonstrated a willingness to use WMDs, (c) Saddam refusing to account for the WMDs he admitted having had though obligated to do so, (d) Saddam having had an announced vendetta against the US, (e) Saddam having been known to have had contacts with Al Qaeda, and (d) September 11, 2001.

Bush enforced the terms of the 1991 armistice that the UN wouldn’t. This is not difficult, kids.

Everything else, including John Judis’ so-called prescience is nothing but after-the-fact opinion mongering and guesswork. As for the sentence that has entranced so many here, nNamely, Judis knew dissenters in the CIA and the military “intelligentsia”? Well, that’s an example of advanced opinion mongering, is all, so snap out of it. And by the way, what the hell is the military intelligentsia anyway? If Judis means military “intelligence,” or G2, he should say so. As it stands, he’s offering low-cal tendentious opinion all dressed up with no place to go, aka “garbage.”

Has it really escaped all the big thinkers here that the two places to find people who definitely credited claims that Iraq had WMDs were—wait for it—the CIA, as in “the Director of”? Or how about in military intelligence? Opinion was divided, but the preponderant opinion by far was not Judis’, okay? It was not Judis’ opinion that was in the National Intelligence Estimate used by Congress in 2002. Moreover, Congress voted by wide margins not to trust Saddam as well when they passed the authorization act for the war. Of course there are all sorts of conspiracy theories for the feeble-minded out there to account for that, I suppose. Or there’s Mr. Cobb who “knew there were no WMDs in Iraq.” How could he know that, one feels entitled to ask? Well, it turns out he talked to some Iraqi who talked to some Iraqi—nothing known about either except Mr. Cobb’s assurances that the somebodies knew all about Iraqi WMDs. That’s it? That is drivel on stilts., that’s what that is.

Or cw who “wouldn’t want to be [Bush] in a million years.” Wow! And Brrrr! What an impressive and insightful rebuke from someone who was in no position to affect anything about Iraq, whose wish to be or not to be so much as the dogcatcher in Hooterville at the time could have had no consequences that were visible without an electron microscope.

Or mrglover, from whom I really must ask for an example of “the latest Bush Big Lie du jour” that “had collapsed” at that time? What was it, not now, but then? One example will do. As an incentive, you should know that I am a huge fan of fantastic sagas of self-aggrandizement, which has, couldn’t you just guess, led you to question this society, poor dear. But you’d best have your dates straight, else all the huffing-and-puffing and self-congratulations in the world in the world can’t create a lie out of a different opinion.

Not one of you Nostradamuses knew anything worth knowing at the time. Not a blessed thing. What that means is: Even “knowing,” as you imagine you did, that Saddam had no WMDS, was all but worthless knowledge at the time without proof that he had none, which meant proof that he had destroyed them, which was all that he was being asked to provide, had promised to provide, yet refused to provide. As for the UN inspectors, they had demonstrated their incompetence in very risky matters several times by 2003.

George Bush had a decision to make. He made it. And he gave his reasons. The hysteria here is quite unprovoked. Get off the soapboxes already. You’re liable to nosebleeds way up there.

I’ve posted this before, but the lead up to the invasion of Iraq felt to me at the time what a lynch mob must feel like. The mob wanted revenge. They couldn’t have the perpetrators, so the guys who physically resembled them would do. It was child’s play (and depressing in its blatancy) for the mob’s leaders to direct the mob at the particular people who happened to own the goodies the leadership wanted their hands on.

“Yes, we were deceived about any number of matters – but we, official Washingtonians and ignorant college students, wanted to be deceived. Because we wanted to go to war.”

Indeed, and at the time to many outside observers such as myself the reason for this seemed obvious, there for all to see. 9/11 hurt American pride, more than everything else, and when your pride is hurt, you do not care about the truth.

That the invasion would cost less than a couple hundred billion. Recall that an underling — I’m not going to bother googling him up for you — got sacked for mentioning that figure.

That the Iraqis were sheltering/supporting/aiding some fairly well-known Al Qaeda — Zarkawi (sp?), if memory serves. In fact he was in the northern, Kurdish region, which was well known as a de facto autonomous zone.

Aluminum tubes, of course.

There’s three. I could dig up lots more, if I wanted to slog through my writings at the time. And of course there’s Google. And as various archives are opened up, more will surely turn up.

Slightly amazing that dead-enders like you are still trying to — I’m not sure what, persuade?

What’s amazing—and I don’t mean “slightly—is that you cling to the notion that any of those items are or even could be lies.

First of all, how do you know, how could anyone know what a war will cost in advance? It’s impossible to call that a lie, flat impossible. One bogus “lie” claim.

I’m glad you brought up the aluminum tubes. It demonstrates the top-to-bottom ignorance of sanctimonious types such as yourself, it is so frequently mentioned. The controversy over those tubes was clearly specified before the invasion, in the October, 2002, NIE. Both opinions were provided up front with no intent to deceive. The Department of Energy’s position was that the tubes were not for centrifuge use. The Department of State, which has an intelligence service, however, insisted that the tubes were consistent with tubes for a centrifuge. It was only after the fact that the moron class spread the canard that Bush had insisted on one interpretation over the other, and you seem to be a paid-in-full-member of that bunch. Bogus “lie” number two.

Your memory stinks. The man who, before the war, claims were made that he was affiliated with Al Qaeda, was Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi citizen since age three—born in Indiana when his father was a graduate student, who, on that basis, in July, 1992, left Baghdad for Amman, Jordan, to get a travel visa into the United States. He arrived in September, where he immediately joined Ramzi Yusef, the man convicted of the bombing five years later and supposedly the nephew of Khaled Sheik Mohammed. Together they built the bomb. Of that there is no doubt whatsoever.

Until those two showed up mysteriously and for no apparent reason, since neither had any connection to the other men ultimately convicted with Yusef (Yusef traveled on an Iraqi passport), the first World Trade Center (WTC) bombing in February, 1993, was intended as an attack on as many individuals as possible—preferably Jewish—having anything to do with the conviction of Sayyed Nosair, the Egyptian–American who assassinated Meir Kahane in 1990. It was Yusef and Yasin who took the inept bumblers of the Jersey City Islamist cell and convinced them to forget about pipe bombs and concentrate on getting an explosives laden van into the WTC parking garage.

After the bombing, Yasin fled the country (as did Yusef, captured in Pakistan in 1996) and returned to Iraq leaving the others to take the fall. When his part in the first WTC bombing was discovered, Yasin was listed by the FBI as a co-conspirator wanted for questioning. The Iraqis would only agree to extradition only if the US signed off on a statement exonerating Iraq from involvement in the bombing in advance (all occuring when Clinton was president). The US declined the opportunity. He was interviewed in 2002 on 60 Minutes, where he denied everything. As it happens, that was the last time anyone has ever seen or heard of him. Extensive searches after the invasion came up without a trace of the man. It’s not hard to guess why Yasin vanished. In the words of Max von Sydow to Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor concerning why he’s just shot Addison Powell deader than disco, “I suspect he was about to become something of an embarrassment.”

Zarqawi’s name came up during Powell’s presentation to the United States as an Al Qaeda member being harbored by Saddam. That was in February, 2003. It was not until the end of 2004, that the CIA issued a report that the evidence of a Saddam–Zarqawi conclusion was “inconclusive” but that they tended to doubt it. He was also mentioned in the Feith Memorandum of November, 2003, which was a summary of intelligence data concerning Al Qaeda cooperation with Iraq but which also “drew no conclusions” about Zarqawi. There are no lies here and both the CIA report and the memorandum date from after the war. Bogus lie number three.

I warned you to get your dates right, but you ignored me, blundered ahead repeating the same crap that’s been shown to be just that, 24-carat crap, for ages when it comes to the ridiculous “Bush lied–People died” meme that, it would seem, slanderers such as yourself simply cannot get through the day without repeating. It bounces around and caroms inside your skull like a ball in a squash court, unimpeded by any sense of the facts. Wake up! You have living in an echo chamber, repeating like a parrot any vagrant bit of nonsense that the parrot on the perch next door spits up: “Bush lied! Squawk!!!”

I am writing from Britain. Tony Blair took Britain to war in Iraq alongside the US for the sake of the ‘special relationship’.The main reason he has got away with it is because the Conservative oppostion fully supported him. Ian Duncan -Smith, the Conservative leader at the time, was, if anything, even more enthusiastic than Blair. He is now a minister in David Cameron’s government. Just before the invasion, Robin Cook, who had been Foreign Secretary between 1997 and 2001 , resigned from the government. In his resignation speech to the House of Commons he stated that ‘Iraq probably does not possess any WMD in the commonly understood meaning’. As Foreign Secretary he would of course have seen M16 briefings on Iraq. You can see his resignation speech on You Tube.

Donald Davidson – – I agree the “special resltionship” was one reason Blair backed Bush in the illegal invasion of Iraq. Blair obtained Bush’s agreement to push strongly for an end to the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, as a quid pro quo. Bush reneged.

Just before the invasion of Iraq took place Elizabeth Wilmshurst resigned as Deputy Legal Director of the Foreign Office because in her view the war was illegal in the absence of a second UN resolution. I would have opposed the war even if the second UN resolution had passed.